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him to come for?"
    "You told me to invite him."
    So we bickered, gently. Still, it was a way to pass the eve-
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    ning. Maybe I had been too harsh in my previous judgment of Ray. Maybe she would find Ray genuinely charming.
    At nine o'clock he called from a gas station; he had gotten a late start and there was a traffic jam.
    "He's not even close," my mother said. "Why don't you just tell him to go home? By the time he gets here it'll be ten o'clock."
    Ray arrived at ten-fifteen. He brought two bottles of expensive wine: the price stickers were still on them—$29 and $18. I didn't even like wine. I wondered how my mother, a tall, thin woman, nearly five feet ten, with the presence of a dyspeptic duchess, garbed in a frowsy old sweater, must have appeared to Ray. He was freshly shaved, smelled of aftershave, and wore raiment that might have been ripped from the pages of some men's magazine. He barely came up to her shoulder.
    Ray wasn't hungry, but we ate a little chili and salad and then went out for a walk. At the end of the street was an empty lot someone had turned into a vegetable garden, with neat rows of asparagus, tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. None of the plants were very big yet. The evening was cool, murky, with a shimmery liquid quality to it. Ray cleared his throat. "How's your brother doing?" I said.
    "Fine," Ray said. "He has a beautiful Swedish girlfriend. He just got home for the summer."
    "How's that crazy cat?" I said.
    "Max?" Ray said. "He's fine." We turned around and walked the other way.
    "Listen," he said. "I really want to get married."
    "Oh?" I said.
    "I mean, maybe you think this is coming out of left field."
    "Not if that's what you want to do," I said. "When are you getting married?"
    "No, seriously," Ray said. "I was thinking we could go steady."
    "I don't even know you, Ray," I said.
    "Well, that's okay," he said. "You'd get to know me."
    I turned to look at him, but he wasn't smiling. I thought I
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    had never met a person who had less to say; nor did I feel any doglike waves of love coming from him. There was simply no connection.
    "Do you want to go someplace?" he said. "To a roadhouse?"
    "No, I'm pretty tired," I said. I walked with him back to his car.
    "Will you call me if you change your mind?" he said. "Think about it, anyway?"
    "Don't you want to take your wine back?" I said. "We didn't even open it."
    "No," he said. "It's for you. Listen, I don't mean to keep bugging you—"
    "That's okay," I said. I rubbed my forehead for a second.
    "I have to go into the hospital next week," he said. "They're operating on my back. I'll be in the hospital for a while. Could you come and visit me?"
    "I guess," I said. "Sure, sure. How did it happen that you fell down an elevator shaft, anyway?" It was strange that I'd never bothered to ask him before.
    "My fiancée," Ray said. "It was a New Year's Eve party, and we were engaged—in fact we were going to be married in a week—and I bumped into her in the bathroom with some guy. I just started running, and it was in an old loft building, and the elevator door opened, and the elevator wasn't there."
    My mother was still awake when I went to her room. "Did you have fun?" she said. "I can't believe he brought such expensive bottles of wine. Who drinks that stuff?"
    "He wants to get married," I said.
    "Go ahead," she said. She turned back to her book. "He has small, eloquent feet and hands," she said to the page.
    "He likes to try on my shoes," I said.
    "As part of sex?"
    "We never slept together," I said. "His feet might be small, but I still don't like him wearing my shoes."
    My mother shrugged. "If you like him, maybe you could find him a pair in his size at the thrift store."
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    The hospital room, on the twenty-second floor, was crammed with masses of expensive floral arrangements: scarlet blossoms sprang out of moss, and there were heathery clouds of purple and violet. I knew just one of the bouquets probably cost enough to feed and keep me